Subject: (urth) STFU

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:10:52 +0000

Ha, gotcha! Actually the subject line is completely pertinent and completely Wolfe, ala An Evil Guest. Does anyone have any idea why Wolfe bothers to have the cop that meets Cassie in the soda/ice cream shop tell the girl working there to "Shut the fuck up." I mean, it was so jarring and so un Wolfe-ish, that I did a double take and then started laughing my ass off. It really is pretty funny, but does anyone think there's a reason for it that furthers the story?

Don 

Doggerel
www.don-doggett.blogspot.com

---

From: Chris P <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:48:31 +0000

The cop is not a Wolfean hero, he is a bend-the-rules sort of cop who has been called on out of the blue to pay back a favor and is annoyed.

However, on that note, who killed the hapless doorman who was sent to lure her out to talk to.. whoever it was... in the alley?

-- 
"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set." -- Lin Yutang

> Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:10:52 -0700
> From: kingwukong at yahoo.com
> To: urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net
> Subject: (urth) STFU
> 
> 
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From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:27:07 +0000

It has been growing on me, how clever this novel is. On the surface, it is
not only a pulp novel, it is a *bad* pulp novel, with a poor editing job:
why the author and editor can't even keep the address of the heroine
straight. People are mentioned, killed, forgotten. It is easy to see
someone who doesn't know Wolfe saying 'Eh! The author can't even be
bothered to keep a bit of consistency? Onto the trash heap with it!'.

.

> The cop is not a Wolfean hero, he is a bend-the-rules sort of cop who has
> been called on out of the blue to pay back a favor and is annoyed.
>
> However, on that note, who killed the hapless doorman who was sent to lure
> her out to talk to.. whoever it was... in the alley?
>
> --
>> Ha, gotcha! Actually the subject line is completely pertinent and
>> completely Wolfe, ala An Evil Guest. Does anyone have any idea why Wolfe
>> bothers to have the cop that meets Cassie in the soda/ice cream shop
>> tell the girl working there to "Shut the fuck up." I mean, it was so
>> jarring and so un Wolfe-ish, that I did a double take and then started
>> laughing my ass off. It really is pretty funny, but does anyone think
>> there's a reason for it that furthers the story?
>>
>> Don
>>
>> Doggerel
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> Urth Mailing List

---

From: Mo Holkar / UKG <lists at ukg.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:31:17 +0000

At 10:27 27/03/2009, brunians wrote:
>It is easy to see someone who doesn't know Wolfe saying 'Eh! The 
>author can't even be bothered to keep a bit of consistency? Onto the 
>trash heap with it!'.

And other people, who do know Wolfe, getting into increasingly 
stranger contortions to try and explain away such apparent inconsistencies.

Mo

# ~ # ~ #

WolfeWiki now at:
http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:46:02 +0000

Now that's an observation that makes me really want to read the book. From the discussion here, I first thought it might be silly intertextual fun, then got a growing impression of deeper currents. But this is great. Is Wolfe imitating a dead or dying storytelling mode right down to its well-known flaws?

And has he always done this?

------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:27:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: brunians at brunians.org
Subject: (urth) AEG - False Loose Ends
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
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From: Henry Eissler <henryeissleriii at mindspring.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:45:09 +0000

My take is that the Baskin Robbins girl is also in on whatever charade 
is going on.
My related question is: Why is the ice cream girl so keen to tell Cassie 
how much she hates her?
    ---H

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:33:22 +0000

Doggerel

--- On Fri, 3/27/09, Chris P <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The cop is not a Wolfean hero, he is a bend-the-rules sort
> of cop who has been called on out of the blue to pay back a
> favor and is annoyed.

Yeah, but he appears again several times, but this sort of raw vulgarity is nowhere to be seen, nowhere else in the novel, and nowhere in any of Wolfe's other works that I've read. I'm a big fan of tactical vulgarity in fiction but it was really jarring here, and I can't imagine it was done just to show this guy is a "tough as nails" detective.

Don

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:44:41 +0000

Doggerel

--- On Fri, 3/27/09, Henry Eissler <henryeissleriii at mindspring.com> wrote:

> My take is that the Baskin Robbins
> girl is also in on whatever charade is going on.
> My related question is: Why is the ice cream girl so keen
> to tell Cassie how much she hates her?

I forgot it was a Baskin Robbins. That was one of the things that made it so funny when I first read it. As for your question, I thought she hated Cassie because she's a teenager, the ice cream shop is empty and about to close, and Cassie walks in and orders and makes herself at home.

Don

---

From: Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:08:20 +0000

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 2:10 AM, don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com> wrote:

> bothers to have the cop that meets Cassie in the soda/ice cream shop tell
> the girl working there to "Shut the fuck up."

The cop works for/with the BATF, Wolfe hates the BATF, so he writes the cop
as a complete bastard?

> Don

Tom
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From: Chris P <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:23:21 +0000

> Yeah, but he appears again several times, but this sort of raw vulgarity is nowhere to be seen, nowhere else in the novel, and nowhere in any of Wolfe's other works that I've read. I'm a big fan of…

OK, but at the same time in his later appearances he also seems more polite. Possibly because he's in more control of the situation, rather than possibly having been called up in the middle of the night to do some (seemingly unnecessarily) convoluted task.

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From: Stephen Hoy <stephenhoy at yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:43:08 +0000

> My related question is: Why is the ice cream girl so keen to tell Cassie

Cassie: "I wish we could be friends."
B-R girl: "I've got three friends...Rita, Amber, and Christabelle."
- p28

There's been a bit of discussion about the "loose ends" in AEG, but I think
it's possible to read these loose ends as extra-textual allusions that align
with the story.

First things first, why does Wolfe set a scene at a Baskin-Robbins? Does it
have something to do with the company's 31 flavors?  Maybe it's an allusion
to Messier 31, the Andromeda galaxy.

Second, why mention these three friends? Maybe they have something in common
that pertains to Wolfe's plan for AEG.

Working backwards from least to most obscure -- 'Christabelle' suggests
Coleridge's long poem with a similar name, "Christabel." The key aspect of
this poem is the way Coleridge explores the character's perception of
reality between waking and dreaming.

Similar theme with the second name, 'Amber'. The name suggests Roger
Zelazny's Amber series of books and stories. This may be a subtle hint at
Wolfe's method, the idea of one True World and an infinite number of shadow
worlds, alterable "at will" by an adept.

If we continue along the same theme of altered perceptions, the name 'Rita'
suggests the character of Rita/Camilla in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive."
Cassie shares some interesting aspects with one of the actresses in this
film, including responsibility for the death of at least one of the other
characters.

[I haven't figured out a tie-in for B-R girl's reference to Rita's little
brother.]

Finally, at the end of this page we get the detective--"The man who entered
was both tall and wide, nearing middle age." And departs B-R with a jarring
finger-point: "You stfu."

I wonder whether this is an allusion to John Goodman. Size and shape and age
match, and Goodman comically utters "STFU, Donnie" in The Big Lebowski, but
he plays a detective in a couple of movies. Specifically, One Night at
McCool's has a few parallels with AEG--especially the animal magnetism of
the actress Jewel--and this may explain why Wolfe puts the detective's words
on the page.

---

From: Matthew Keeley <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:55:54 +0000

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 5:43 PM, Stephen Hoy <stephenhoy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> have something to do with the company's 31 flavors? “Maybe it's an allusion
> Second, why mention these three friends” Maybe they have something in common

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_of_Cascia

The saint's life seems thematically relevant to AEG: Her love turns a
bad man into a good one.

What's this about R's little brother in AEG? I don't have the book on me here.

-Matt

---

From: Stephen Hoy <stephenhoy at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:28:45 +0000

> What's this about R's little brother in AEG? I don't have the

------------------
B-R Girl: I like everyone of them fifty times more than you. Even
Christabelle.
Cassie  : Puts me in my place. Got a spoon?
B-R Girl: I even like Rita's little brother better than you.
- AEG p28
------------------

If those names were rattled off by B-R Girl because they have some
connection to the rest of the AEG story, we'd expect to be able to identify
a Rita with a little brother who has a similar tie-in to AEG as the other
names. None comes to mind, which may mean I'm off-target with one or all of
the suggestions I've made. Still, there's a Mulholland Drive quality to AEG.
It seems like every time Cassie awakens, 'reality' has mutated.